8/15/2007 @ 6:00PM

America's Most Sincere Candidates

Fred Thompson, who has spent the past five years on television honing his sincerity, is the most sincere of the 14 presidential candidates of both political parties, according to the August edition of the Forbes ’08 Tracker opinion poll. The least sincere is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a still undeclared candidate.

The surprise, however, is the ranking of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg as the second-least sincere candidate, and this despite years of his earnest attempts at honing his image before television crews that haunt City Hall. Only 12% of our nationwide poll sample selected sincerity as an attribute they would assign to the mayor, as yet an undeclared candidate but expected to jump into the race as an Independent.

Some 26% of a polled sample of Americans of voting age pick sincerity as one of the attributes that describes Thompson. He’s followed by three Democrats–New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.–who were each described as sincere by 25%, 24% and 23% of those polled, respectively.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the winner in the Iowa straw poll of Republicans last weekend, was the second-ranking Republican, with a 22% sincerity rating. Richardson and Kucinich also have the burden of very low awareness among our sample: Only 17% can identify Kucinich, and only 16% know who Richardson is.

Neither Forbes.com nor E-Poll, the California market research company that is conducting the polling, defines any of the 46 attributes on which it polls its sample population, the same traits it has used to select high-level spokespeople for advertising campaigns for more than a decade.

Politics, along with selling cars, television shows or any other product, has become a complex marketing process. The 46 attributes help define trends and key drivers of what moves a person to respond or react to the messaging and the messenger. In this case, the candidate’s name is given to the polled population, which is then asked to match whichever of the attributes it believes is appropriate for the candidate in question.

Sincerity, of course, is not necessarily a central requirement for a president. Still, any president who expects to use the power of that office effectively should present at least an appearance of sincerity in dealing with his administration, Congress or voters. The fact that Thompson is both the most sincere candidate and has the highest overall appeal of any candidate of either party would suggest either that he has a strong carry-over from the five years he spent playing Manhattan’s district attorney on NBC’s Law & Order or that he has picked up the knack of sincerity during a long public career as a trial lawyer, senator and actor.

The fact that only 16% of our sample considers Hillary Clinton sincere could also be a factor in her low appeal ranking (in eighth place out of 14 candidates) and her high score (second among all candidates) as the meanest.